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January 1, 2015REQUEST FOR PROPOSALRP002-15The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners is soliciting competitive sealed proposals from qualified Firms toPurchase of Software, Hardware, Licenses, and Professional Services for a Load Balancer Platform withoptions for renewal for four (4) additional years of service for the Department of Information Technology Services.Proposals must be returned in a sealed container marked on the outside with the Request for Proposal number andCompany Name. Proposals will be received until 2:50 P.M. local time on February 13, 2015 at the GwinnettCounty Financial Services - Purchasing Division – 2nd Floor, 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046.Any proposal received after this date and time will not be accepted. Proposals will be publicly opened and onlynames of submitting firms will be read at 3:00 P.M. A list of firms submitting proposals will be available thefollowing business day on our website www.gwinnettcounty.com.A pre-proposal conference is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. on January 22, 2015 at the Gwinnett County PurchasingOffice, 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville, GA 30043. All interested firms are urged to attend. Questions regardingproposals should be directed to Susan Clarke, CPPB at susan.clarke@gwinnettcounty.com or by calling 770-8228732, no later than February 21, 2015. Proposals are legal and binding upon the bidder when submitted. Oneunbound original and five (5) copies should be submitted.Successful Proposer will be required to meet insurance requirements. The Insurance Company should be authorizedto do business in Georgia by the Georgia Insurance Department, and must have an A.M. Best rating of A-5 orhigher.Gwinnett County does not discriminate on the basis of disability in the admission or access to its programs oractivities. Any requests for reasonable accommodations required by individuals to fully participate in any openmeeting, program or activity of Gwinnett County Government should be directed to Michael Plonowski, GwinnettCounty Justice and Administration Center, 770-822-8015.The written proposal documents supersede any verbal or written prior communications between the parties.Selection criteria are outlined in the request for proposal documents. Gwinnett County reserves the right to rejectany or all proposals to waive technicalities and to make an award deemed in its best interest.Award notification will be posted after award on the County website, www.gwinnettcounty.com and companiessubmitting a proposal will be notified via email.We look forward to your proposal and appreciate your interest in Gwinnett County.Susan R. Clarke, CPPBPurchasing Associate IIISC/ts
RP002-15Page 2Request for ProposalLoad Balancer Related Hardware, Software,Licenses, and Professional ServicesForGwinnett County, GARequested ByGwinnett County Board of CommissionersFor TheDepartment of Information Technology
RP002-15Page 3ContentsGeneral Information: . 4Definition of Terms: . 4Overview . 6Objective . 6Scope . 6Solution Requirements . 6Proposer Qualifications . 7Experience and Expertise . 7Confidentiality . 7Incomplete Projects. 7Financial Stability . 7Grading Criteria . 8RFP Response . 9Contents of Requirements response to Submittals(s). 111.Company Overview (Chapter 1) . 112.Executive Summary (Chapter 2) . 113.Product Information (Chapter 3) . 11Sample Project . 114.Experience, Qualifications, and References (Chapter 4) . 125.Sample Contracts (Chapter 5) . 126.Pricing Worksheets (Chapter 6) . 12Pricing Worksheets . 14System Components. 14Services . 15Maintenance . 16References . 18CODE OF ETHICS AFFIDAVIT. 19CONTRACTOR AFFIDAVIT AND AGREEMENT . 19
RP002-15Page 4General Information:Definition of Terms:Several terms are used within this RFP that should be interpreted as:1. Can/would like/optional – This information can be included in the RFP response but is notrequired and is not a judgment criteria, or the respondent has a choice to respond in a certainmanner2. Should/desired – It is strongly recommended that the response includes this information orcovers this area, but is not required, and may be taken into consideration as a judgmentcriterion.3. Must – Is required for the RFP response to be considered.Gwinnett County Department of Information Technology Services (herein DoITS).Gwinnett County Department of Support Services (herein DoSS).Wherever used in this Agreement, whether in the singular or in the plural, the following terms shall havethe following meanings:1. COUNTY-means Gwinnett County, Georgia, a political subdivision of the State of Georgia.2. SUPPLEMENTAL AGREEMENT-means a written order to PROPOSER signed by PROPOSER andaccepted by COUNTY, effecting an addition, deletion or revision in the Work, or an adjustmentin the Agreement Price or the Contract Time, issued after execution of this Agreement.3. CONTRACT-means the Agreement Documents specifically identified and incorporated herein byreference in Section 2, CONTRACT DOCUMENTS.4. AGREEMENT EXECUTION-means the date on which the Agreement is fully executed by thePROPOSER and COUNTY to perform the Work.5. AGREEMENT PRICE-means the total monies, adjusted in accordance with any provision herein,payable to the PROPOSER under this Agreement. CONTRACT TIME-means the period of timestated in this Agreement for the completion of the Work.6. PROPOSER-means the party or parties contracting directly with the COUNTY to perform Workpursuant to this Agreement.7. DEPARTMENT- means the Director or designee of requesting department(s) named in thissolicitation.
RP002-15Page 58. DRAWINGS-means collectively, all the drawings, receipt of which is acknowledged by theCOUNTY, listed in this Agreement, and also such supplementary drawings as the PROPOSER mayissue from time to time in order to clarify or explain such drawing or to show details which arenot shown thereon.9. SPECIFICATIONS-means the written technical provisions including all appendices thereto, bothgeneral and specific, which form a part of the Agreement Documents.10. SUB/SUBCONTRACTOR-means any person, firm, partnership, joint venture, company,corporation, or entity having a contractual agreement with PROPOSER or with any of its subProposers at any tier to provide a part of the Work called for by this Agreement.11. WORK-means any and all obligations, duties and responsibilities, including furnishingequipment, engineering, design, workmanship, labor and any other services or things necessaryto the successful completion of the Project, assigned to or undertaken by PROPOSER under thisAgreement.12. LIAISON-Representative of the COUNTY who shall act as Liaison between the County and thePROPOSER for all matters pertaining to this Agreement, including review of PROPOSER'S plansand work.13. CLIENT ENDPOINT-A County owned, maintained, and controlled desktop, laptop, or other PCdevice primarily running Windows XP or 7.
RP002-15Page 6OverviewGwinnett County hereby solicits sealed, written proposals for the purchase of software, hardware,licenses, and professional services related to a load balancer platform. Proposals must include initialyear pricing with pricing for all related support and maintenance after implementation to cover anadditional four (4) years of service. Proposals will be scored based upon the criterion set forth withinthis solicitation. The County reserves the right to enter into contract negotiations with the highestscoring firm the contract and make and award based upon the County’s best interest.ObjectiveGwinnett County current utilizes two Cisco ACE Load Balancers which provide single manager loadbalancing to a number of applications within the Gwinnett County Environment. The County desires toreplace the current boxes, and to move toward a hosting center type setup, where individual customershave access their balancer, and changes and load on one customer’s balancer cannot affect the othercustomers.ScopeThis RFP covers the purchase of all products and services related to the load balancers, includinginstallation, ongoing support, and training services. Failure to provide adequate support and trainingservices will be grounds for the County to deduct points from the appropriate grading criteria, since thecapability of the service provider to provide these services are critical to the County.Solution RequirementsThe proposed solution must: be able to perform in an HA pairsupport throughput from up to 120 Gbps of System Throughput without replacing hardwareappliances through license upgradesThe ability to acquire temporary BURST licenses within the above specified range of SystemThroughput to accommodate for peak time performance if requiredinclude the following features enabled without requiring multiple appliances or modules (notoptional) - GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing), Web Application Firewall, SSL Offloadallow for the configuration of dedicated and isolated LB/ADC’s on each appliance capable of thefollowing features – GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing), Web Application Firewall, SSL Offloadsupport open industry standard or equivalent to Cisco NetFlow and with the capability ofleveraging 3rd party analytics and monitoring tools such as Splunk or SolarWindsbe abe to integrate into Cisco’s Nexus product line using Cisco features such as RISE (RemoteIntegrated Service Engine) and APIC (Application Policy Infrastructure Controller) allowing theLoad Balancer/ADC appliances to appear as Service Module or Remote Line Card within theCisco Nexus infrastructure to provide Health Monitoring, Plug and Play Auto-Provisioning, aswell as Discovery & Bootstrap.
RP002-15 Page 7be able to provide support for running 3rd Party applications from within instances of theappliances such as Websense, BlueCoat, Palo Alto Virtual Firewalls, and SiteMinder.Provide the future ability to integrate into virtual desktop solutions to provide load balancing,reverse proxy for remote users, integrated monitoring tools for troubleshooting virtual desktopapplications on WAN/LAN links.Proposer QualificationsThe successful Proposer must be certified through the manufacturer sales channel to sell, install, andsupport all aspects of the proposed solution. This will be demonstrated by a letter from a manufacturerchannel representative. Partners with higher levels of training and certification will be preferred.Experience and ExpertiseThe Proposer should demonstrate experience working in large, Public Sector environments by providing:1. Provide a minimum of five (5) customer references. Complete using the customer referenceforms.2. References should be with local government, state government, federal government, large,Public Sector organizations in preferred order. While the County will make every reasonableattempt to verify the Proposers’ references, the County does not assume any responsibility forthe references failure to respond or to provide complete responses.It is the responsibility of the Proposer to make sure the each reference contact name andnumber is up to date and that they are comfortable with responding to a series of questionsregarding the contract, the firms’ performance, and other general questions.ConfidentialityThe Proposer and all personnel assigned to work directly on this project must be willing to signconfidentiality agreements with Gwinnett County and will be required to pass criminal backgroundchecks. Any personnel who fail to pass a background check and/or have a current court case within theGwinnett County court system will be prohibited from working on site or on this project.Incomplete ProjectsThe Proposer must list and explain all incidents within the last three (3) years wherein a contract wasterminated prior to completion. Proposers must list all lawsuits in which the Proposer and a customerwere parties within the last five (5) years.Financial StabilityThe Proposer shall submit a statement of financial stability prepared by a recognized financial dataservice (e.g. Dunn and Bradstreet or Moody’s), or an audited financial statement for the previous three(3) years.
RP002-15Page 8Grading CriteriaEmphasis for consideration will be placed upon how well the Proposer demonstrates an understandingof the challenges that must be overcome to successfully implement the solution, the solutions offeredto overcome the challenges, the related experience of the staff proposed to work on the project, thecompleteness and reasonability of the proposed work plan, and cost.All technical decisions should be explained in depth including why the specific solution was chosen, thepositives and negatives of the chosen solution, and alternative solutions with the positives and negativesof those choices.This RFP is issued in accordance with the Gwinnett County Policy for the Procurement of ProfessionalServices, Competitive Proposals Selection Method. Therefore, both qualitative factors and price are tobe considered; given that price is one of the selection criteria and not the final determinant. A scoringcommittee will be assigned to review, evaluate, and rank all responsive proposals utilizing an evaluationscoring system. Factors that will be considered in the evaluation of proposals will include, but not belimited to the following: Flexibility of solution to grow and change with environmental needCompleteness of solutionTechnical featuresProposers’ referencesProposed warranty, training, support and maintenance offeringsRFP response document completenessCosts of equipment, software, services, and maintenanceThe sufficiency of financial resources and ability of business to perform the contractProposers’ experience and qualifications related to planning, delivering, and installing thesystem in a timely mannerThe proposals will be evaluated in a three (3) phase scoring process. The technical portion of theproposals will be scored first. At the discretion of the scoring committee, the committee may shortlistthe proposals before proceeding to the next phase. The number of proposals making the shortlist will beat the sole discretion of the scoring committee.Cost proposals of the firms advancing into the second phase will be opened and scored based upon totallump sum cost and the pricing worksheets submitted. Proposals may be shortlisted again prior toproceeding to phase three. The number of proposals making the shortlist will be at the sole discretion ofthe scoring committee.The County will contact those firms advancing into the third phase to arrange date/time of interview.The cost of the interview shall be borne by the Proposer. The County will not reimburse the proposer forany fees incurred while participating in the RFP process. The County may decide that interviews are notnecessary and therefore forgoing phase three.
RP002-15Page 9The County reserves the right to seek clarification from vendors during the scoring phase. Once theCounty has determined the highest scoring Proposer, the County reserves the right to enter intocontract negotiation with said firm prior to contract award. The County may negotiate terms, conditions,pricing, and/or scope of work to be performed. If negotiations with the highest scoring firm prove to beunsuccessful, the County reserves the right to enter into negotiations with the second highest scoringfirm and so on until an agreement is reached.The following point system will be used to evaluate the submitted proposals:Technical Company Stability, Experience, and Expertise – 20 Pointso Number of years and success of company in video and security marketso Certifications and Authorizationso Financial Statementso Other items listed in the RFPCompleteness of Product Offerings within Markets – 20 Pointso Ability to address all requirements in RFPo Ability to expand and support other needso Ability to manage solution with minimal staff interventiono Minimal impact on current systems/infrastructureQuality of Sample Project Proposal – 20 PointsCompliance with RFP format/Completeness – 10 PointsReferences – 10 Pointso Up to two points per referenceCost Evaluation Cost – 20 Pointso Overall cost of components, software, licenses, implementation, training, andmaintenanceInterviews Optional Interviews - 10 Points (Bonus)RFP ResponseTo facilitate comparative analysis and evaluation of proposals it is desired that a uniform format beemployed in structuring each proposal. The required format is one that will coincide with thespecifications given later in this RFP. The Proposer’s degree of compliance with the requirements of theRFP will be a factor in the subsequent evaluation of the proposal. Proposals with major deviat
Load Balancer/ADC appliances to appear as Service Module or Remote Line Card within the . BlueCoat, Palo Alto Virtual Firewalls, and SiteMinder. Provide the future ability to integrate into virtual desktop solutions to provide load balancing, reverse proxy for remote users, integrated
